The Case of the Moth-Eaten Mink

Chapter 9

Mason took the elevator to the lobby and started for the street door.

A uniformed officer barred his way.

“I’ve been interrogated and discharged,” Mason said.

“No one’s told me you’re discharged,” the officer said.

“I’ve told them all I know. I’ve been interrogated by both Lieutenant Tragg and Sergeant Jaffrey. What more do you want? I have work to do.”

“Perhaps they’ll want to interrogate you again.”

“They didn’t say so.”

“They didn’t say anything about letting you go. Not to me.”

“They kicked me out.”

“Then wait in the lobby.”

Mason went back to the desk. The clerk had been displaced by a plain-clothes man who seemed affable but who evidenced no desire to assist Mason in his predicament. “Plenty of chairs over there, Counselor,” he said. “The morning newspaper has come in, in case you care to read.”

“Thank you,” Mason said. “Any restrictions on telephoning?”

“Not so far as I know.”

Mason located a lone telephone booth, crossed over to it, dropped a coin and dialed the number of Della Street’s apartment.

He could hear the phone ringing repeatedly, and then Della Street’s voice, thick with sleep, saying, “Hello, yes— Who is it, please?”

“Wake up, Della,” Mason told her. “The fat’s in the fire.”

“Oh, it’s you, Chief!”

“That’s right. Is the phone by the side of your bed?”

“Yes.”

“Then jump out of bed,” Mason told her. “Go splash cold water on your face, then get back to the telephone. I want you wide-awake for this and can’t take chances on you going back to sleep. They may cut me off any minute.”

“Just a second,” she said.

Over the telephone Mason could hear the thud of her feet on the floor. A moment later she was back, saying, “Wide-awake, Chief. What is it?”

Mason said, “I’m at the Keymont Hotel. Morris Alburg called me and asked me to join him in room 721. He failed to meet me there. Someone else did.”

“Man or woman?” she asked.

“Woman.”

“Was it...”

“Careful,” Mason warned. “No names. Just keep listening, Della.”

“All right, go ahead.”

Mason said, “You remember that first night we were talking with Morris Alburg he mentioned that he had at one time employed a detective agency instead of a lawyer.”

“Yes, it seems to me— Yes, I remember. Why, is that important?”

Mason said, “We have the residence number of the cashier at Alburg’s restaurant. Evidently she knows something about his business affairs, and he trusts her.

“Get your clothes on, Della, call a taxi, start working the telephone. Get Morris Alburg’s cashier to tell you the name of the detective agency Morris employed. In case she doesn’t know it, get her to meet you in Alburg’s restaurant. Have her open the office safe, get at his books. Then take the classified telephone directory and get the names of all the licensed private detectives in the city. Then start checking back on Alburg’s books. You’ll probably find a check record listed alphabetically, or else you may find it listed some other way — I don’t know just how he keeps his books... Are you following me?”

“Right abreast with you.”

“Get his books,” Mason said, “and start checking any remittances which he may have made against the list of the private detective agencies.”

“Okay. Suppose we find one. Then what do we do?”

“Wait for me,” Mason said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can get there.”

“You just want that information. You don’t want us to get in touch with the agency?”

“It isn’t a woman’s job,” Mason said. “It’s going to be a tough, hard-boiled, dog-eat-dog proposition... In case the phone rings at Alburg’s place, answer it. I may call you.”

“I’m getting started right now,” she said, her voice crisp and alert.

“Good girl,” Mason told her.

He hung up the telephone, went back to a chair in the lobby, read the newspaper for a while, then strolled over to chat with the plain-clothes man at the desk.

“I guess it’s all right to let you send out uncensored telephone calls,” the man said, his voice showing anxious speculation. “Nobody told me it wasn’t all right, and nobody told me it was.”

“Oh, sure,” Mason said, “no one would want to interfere with my business. After all, a citizen has some rights.”

The plain-clothes man grinned, then suddenly looked up at the door.

Mason followed the direction of his eyes and saw an efficient, trim-looking young woman, clad in a somewhat mannishly tailored outfit, leaving an automobile and being escorted into the hotel by a uniformed officer.

Mason waited until they were halfway across the lobby, then stepped forward with a smile, said, “Minerva Hamlin, I believe.”

Her eyes lit up. “Oh, yes,” she said. “You must be Mr. Mason. I’m...”

The uniformed officer stepped in between them and said, “Nix on it. No talking. No conversation.”

“Good Lord,” Mason protested, “what kind of an inquisition is this?”

“You heard me,” the officer said. “No conversation.”

He took Minerva Hamlin’s arm and hurried her toward the elevator.

The plain-clothes man behind the desk stepped out into the lobby and said, “Sorry, Mr. Mason, but you aren’t supposed to talk with witnesses, yet.”

“Good Lord,” Mason said, “she’s one of Paul Drake’s assistants. I employed her. I’m paying the bill for her time right now.”

“I know, but orders are orders. We’re working on a murder case.”

“Can you tell me why all this air of mystery? What all this elaborate trap is about? Why people are being held here and not permitted to leave the hotel?” Mason demanded indignantly.

The plain-clothes officer grinned a slow, friendly grin, and said, “Hell, no,” and then added, “and you’re a good enough lawyer to know that, too. Go on back and sit down.”

Mason watched the elevator indicator swing slowly around until it came to the second floor and then stop.

“The officers must have taken over the bridal suite for their interrogations,” Mason said.

The plain-clothes man laughed. “A bridal suite in a dump like this,” he said.

“Isn’t that what it is?” Mason asked.

“Hell, they’re all bridal suites.”

“Had much trouble with the place?”

“Ask Sergeant Jaffrey the next time you see him. He’s on the Vice Squad. He knows the place like a book.”

“Any homicides?” Mason asked.

“It isn’t that kind of a joint. Just a dump. It...”

A light flashed on on the switchboard, and the plainclothes man put the headset over his head, said, “Yes, what is it?... Right now?... Okay, I’ll send him up.”

He turned to Mason and said, “They want you upstairs, same room. You know, the ‘bridal suite.’”

“Okay,” Mason said.

“Can I trust you to go up by yourself without doing any exploring, or shall I delegate an officer to...”

“I’ll go right up,” Mason said.

“All right, you know where it is.”

“Sure,” Mason said.

“On your way. They’re waiting.”

Mason pressed the button on the elevator. When the cage came back to the ground floor, he got in, closed the door, pressed the button for the second floor, stepped out of the elevator, and the uniformed officer in the corridor jerked his thumb toward the suite. “They’re waiting for you, Mr. Mason.”

Mason nodded, entered the suite, noticing as he did so that the notebook of the shorthand reporter had now been half-filled with notes, indicating that the somewhat dejected-looking Paul Drake, who seemed as wilted as a warm lettuce leaf, had been submitted to a searching interrogation.

Drake gestured toward the young woman, said, “This is my night switchboard operator, Perry, Minerva Hamlin.”

“How do you do, Mr. Mason,” she said, with the close-clipped accents of a young woman who prides herself on her business efficiency.

Mason said, “Tragg, I’ve told you that I was responsible for Miss Hamlin being sent down here. I wanted to find out the identity of the person who was in room 721 with me.”

“We know all about that,” Sergeant Jaffrey said.

Lieutenant Tragg produced a photograph. “Now, Miss Hamlin,” he said, “we’re going to ask you a question. It’s a very important question both to you and to your employer. I want you to be very careful how you answer it.”

“Why, yes, of course,” she said. “I’m always careful.”

“I may as well tell you,” Lieutenant Tragg said, “that a murder has been committed in this hotel. We are investigating that murder and certain things indicate that we’re working against time. I don’t want to threaten you, but I do want to warn you that any attempt to stall us or to delay matters may make quite a difference. I think you are aware of the penalties for suppressing evidence.”

She nodded, a swift decisive nod of affirmation.

“Now wait a minute,” Sergeant Jaffrey said, “let’s do this thing right, Tragg.”

“How do you mean?”

“We’re going to have an identification of a photograph. This girl may be all right. She may not. I can tell you a lot of things about this dump. I’ve been in it a hundred times. They’ve pulled everything here from call girls on up, or down, whichever way you want to look at it. Now, Frank Hoxie, the night clerk, has one gift. He never forgets a face. You can show him a photograph and if he’s ever seen the face he’ll remember it — even if it’s after weeks, and even if it’s someone who just casually walked across the hotel lobby.”

“Okay,” Tragg said, “let’s get him in, but we can ask Miss Hamlin...”

Jaffrey said with a significant jerk of his head, “Let’s get Hoxie up here first. Show him the picture. Let’s find out definitely who this dame really is.”

Lieutenant Tragg hesitated a moment, then picked up the telephone and said to the plain-clothes man who was at the switchboard, “Send up Frank Hoxie, the night clerk... That’s right. Send him up here right away.”

He hung up.

Jaffrey said, to no one in particular, “Of course, in a way you can’t blame the place. It’s a run-down dump and no one is going to put up money to bring it back into shape, not with this location, not with the reputation the place has, and not with the price that hotel furnishings are selling for these days. They tell me they try to do the best they can, and I’m inclined to believe them, but once a place gets this reputation, a certain class of trade gravitates toward it and there’s nothing much you can do about it.”

Tragg nodded.

Mason said casually, “That picture, is it anyone I know?”

“We don’t know,” Jaffrey said.

“Perhaps I could tell you.”

“You haven’t told us who the woman was who was in the room with you yet,” Jaffrey said.

“I don’t know,” Mason said.

“She told you she was Dixie Dayton, didn’t she?”

Mason started to say something, then changed his mind and remained silent.

“We’ll get around to you in a minute,” Jaffrey said. “We have an ace or two up our sleeve on this deal... Don’t think this is just an ordinary murder case, Mason. This is going back to a cop killing. This Dixie Dayton is hot as a firecracker. She’s tied up with Tom Sedgwick, who, from all we can tell, fired the shots that killed Claremont. Of course, we don’t have anything to say about what cases a lawyer takes, but we sure as hell can put the heat on a private detective if we have to — and we had to.”

“I think Lieutenant Tragg knows how I feel about this,” Mason said. “I’m not sticking up for any cop killers.”

“The hell you’re not,” Jaffrey grunted.

“But,” Mason went on, “how do you know who’s guilty? You haven’t a confession, have you?”

“I know,” Jaffrey said, “it’s the old line of hooey. You lawyers always pull it. A person is presumed to be innocent until he’s convicted. Every citizen is entitled to a jury trial and counsel to defend him. You wouldn’t represent a guilty person. Oh, no, not you! The law presumes your clients innocent until you get done defending them, or until...”

There was a trace of irritation in Lieutenant Tragg’s voice as he interrupted. “Let’s try as far as possible to confine our conversation to the investigation, if you don’t mind, Sergeant. You see, I want the shorthand reporter to be able to state that he took down every word that was uttered in this room and I don’t want to have too big a transcript.”

“And don’t want to have Sergeant Jaffrey cast as the villain of the piece,” Mason said, grinning.

“Well,” Tragg told him, “you know as well as I do, that if you can bait him into saying something he shouldn’t, you’ll subpoena the records and have a field day kicking him around the courtroom.”

“You misjudge me,” Mason said with elaborate politeness.

“Yeah!” Sergeant Jaffrey said sarcastically.

The uniformed officer opened the door. The slender, pale-faced night clerk, whom Mason had seen at the desk when he had first entered the hotel, came into the room and stood somewhat ill at ease in the presence of the officers.

Sergeant Jaffrey said, “Now, Frank, there’s nothing to be afraid of here. This is something you personally aren’t mixed up in. It isn’t like a raid by the Vice Squad. This is Homicide, and we want your co-operation.”

The clerk nodded.

“I want you to know you’re going to get a square shake here,” Jaffrey said. “I’m going to see that you do. No one’s going to push you around. This is Lieutenant Tragg of Homicide, and he wants to ask you to identify a photograph. I told him that you had a photographic memory, that you never forgot a face, and darn seldom forgot a name.”

There was a slight smile around Hoxie’s lips. “I try to be efficient,” he said, “and I think it’s part of the duties of a hotel clerk to be able to call guests by their name — when they want to be called by name.”

“I know,” Jaffrey said, grinning. “All you have to do is remember the name John Smith and you can greet nine people out of ten who register at this place...”

“You’ll pardon me, Sergeant, but we’re trying to run a clean place. Ever since that last time when — and that really wasn’t our fault.”

“Oh, I know, I was kidding,” Sergeant Jaffrey said. “Let it go. Take a look at that picture, will you, Frank?”

Lieutenant Tragg extended the picture.

Hoxie took the photograph, studied it for a moment* then nodded his head.

“You’ve seen her?”

“She’s the one who was registered in 815.”

“Did you register her?” Tragg asked.

“No, a man registered her in. He said she was his sister-in-law who had come for a visit. Mrs. Madison Kerby was the name.”

“But she’s the one who was in 815?”

“She’s the one. I remember giving her the key.”

“There’s no question?”

“None whatever.”

Lieutenant Tragg’s nod was suddenly triumphant. “Will you take a look at that photograph, Miss Hamlin,” he said. “We think that’s the woman all right, but we want your identification.”

“Of course,” Mason pointed out, “there are a lot of different ways of making an identification. This cumulative...”

“That’ll do,” Tragg said. “We don’t want any comments from the audience, Mason... Miss Hamlin, just look at that picture. I don’t want you to be influenced one way or another by what anyone has said. I want you simply to tell us whether that’s the woman you saw leave room 721, take a room key from her purse, and enter room 815.”

Minerva Hamlin took the picture, studied it carefully, then frowned. “Of course,” she said, “I...”

“Now, remember,” Sergeant Jaffrey interposed, “that lots of times a photograph doesn’t look too much like a person until you study it carefully. Take a good long look at it. This is important. This is important to everybody. Don’t say yes, right off the bat, and don’t say no. We don’t want you to say it’s the woman unless it was, but we sure don’t want you to boot the identification and do something you’ll be sorry for.”

“I think— I— I think it is.”

“Take a good long look at it,” Sergeant Jaffrey said. “Study that picture carefully.”

“I have done so. I think this is the woman.”

“That isn’t the strongest way to make an identification,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “Can’t you do better than that?”

“I’ve told you that I thought it was the woman.”

“You don’t ordinarily make mistakes, do you? You look to me like a rather efficient young woman.”

“I try not to make mistakes.”

“And you’re not vague in your thinking, are you?”

“I hope not.”

“All right,” Sergeant Jaffrey said, “never mind the thinking then. Is this the woman or isn’t it?”

“I think—” She paused as she saw the grin on Sergeant Jaffrey’s face.

“Go ahead,” Lieutenant Tragg said.

“It’s the woman,” she said.

“Now, then,” Mason said, “may I see that photograph? You know I had a better opportunity to look at the woman who was in room 721 than anyone else. Miss Hamlin, of necessity, had only a quick glimpse of her when she...”

“Who was the woman who was in 721 with you?” Lieutenant Tragg asked.

“I don’t know,” Mason said.

Sergeant Jaffrey said to Minerva Hamlin, “Write your name on the back of that photograph.”

“And the date,” Lieutenant Tragg said.

Minerva Hamlin did so, then Tragg passed the photograph over to Frank Hoxie. “Write your name on it.”

Hoxie complied.

“And the date,” Sergeant Jaffrey said.

Mason said, “If you’ll let me look at it, Lieutenant, I’ll...”

Sergeant Jaffrey stood up. “Look, Mason,” he said, “you have a certain immunity as a lawyer. The law gives you a loophole. You can squirm out of giving us information. You can claim that things that were said to you were privileged communications from a client. We can’t put pressure on you. Now, I’m going to ask you straight from the shoulder whether the woman who was in that room with you was Dixie Dayton, and whether she didn’t tell you that Morris Alburg was going to kill George Fayette.”

Mason said, “Permit me to point out two things, Sergeant. If the woman in that room was not Dixie Dayton, then anything she said wouldn’t have the slightest evidentiary value against anyone. If she was Dixie Dayton, but wasn’t acting in concert with Morris Alburg, nothing she said could be used against Morris Alburg. And if this person was Dixie Dayton and was my client, anything that she said to me concerning her case would be a confidential communication.”

“That’s just what I thought,” Jaffrey said. “Let me see the picture, Lieutenant.”

Lieutenant Tragg handed him the picture.

Sergeant Jaffrey promptly thrust it into the inside pocket of his coat.

“I think that’s all, Mason,” he said. “Drake, you’ve been yelling about having to go back to run your business. Go ahead. Mason, I guess we can dispense with any more assistance from you.”

“And do I get to see the photograph?” Mason asked.

Jaffrey merely grinned.

“I’ll tell you this much, Mason,” Lieutenant Tragg said, “this is an authentic photograph of Dixie Dayton, the girl who left town at the same time as Thomas E. Sedgwick, on the night that Bob Claremont was murdered.”

“Why give him information when he won’t give us any?” Jaffrey asked.

“I want to be fair with him,” Lieutenant Tragg said.

Jaffrey snorted. “Let him be fair with us first.”

Tragg turned to the shorthand reporter. “You have my statement that this is an authenticated photograph of Dixie Dayton?”

The shorthand reporter nodded.

“I think that’s all,” Tragg said. “This time, Mason, you can leave the hotel.”

“Can I take one more look in room 721?” Mason asked.

Lieutenant Tragg merely smiled.

Sergeant Jaffrey gave a verbal answer. “Hell, no,” he said.

Tragg said, “Come to think of it, Sergeant, it might be better to hold Mason and Paul Drake here until we’ve located that — that thing we were looking for.”

Jaffrey nodded emphatically.

“You may go, Miss Hamlin,” Lieutenant Tragg said. “Drake, you and Mason can wait in the lobby.”

Sergeant Jaffrey flung the door open. “This way out,” he said.

Mason waited in the hallway for Minerva Hamlin.

Abruptly Jaffrey stepped out and said to the uniformed officer who was guarding the corridor, “Here, take this girl down and put her in a taxicab. Send her back to her office. Don’t let anyone talk with her.”

“Look here,” Drake said, “this is my employee. I have to give her some instructions about how to run the office until I can get back and...”

“Give them to me,” Jaffrey said, “and I’ll pass them on to her.”